Working Papers

Social Security Reform, Retirement and Sectoral Decisions. NEW VERSION!

with Pedro ferreira and Rafael Parente. Conditionally accepted - International Economic Review

Low-wage import competition, innovation and growth.

with Pedro Ferreira and Heron Rios.

Work in progress

Allocation of talent in teacher’s occupation and Economic Growth.

The quality of teachers is a determining factor in the formation of human capital, and it is important to understand whether talented workers are opting for teaching. Specifically, as educational stages deliver distinct contributions to human capital formation, the distribution of qualified teachers across educational steps can have relevant economic implications. We developed a general equilibrium model in which workers are heterogeneous and choose their labor market occupation. In addition, the model has several educational stages, and teachers' human capital impacts the amount of educational services provided. Empirically, we use a cross-country dataset to calibrate our model and study the misallocation of teachers among educational stages. We found that by reducing frictions in teachers' occupations, the overall productivity of our sample increase by 110%.

From Malthus to Malthus.

with Pedro Ferreira, Alex Monge-Naranjo, and Luciene Torres.

A veneer of common structural transformation patterns conceals vast differences in the growth and distribution of human capital of countries. In one extreme, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and some segments of China, have transitioned, within just two generations, from prototypical agrarian Malthusian economies to fast-growing, high-skill-intensive modern service economies. In the other extreme, many countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia have transitioned from Malthusian to pseudo-Malthusian economies: Mostly urban but intensive in low-skill service jobs and with low fertility but also low upward mobility. We argue that the direction of education policies of countries is a key determinant for such divergence. In the data, those countries that prioritize subsidies to university education in detriment of elementary and secondary education are precisely the countries that end up with large segments of their population with very low education attainment. In contrast, countries that emphasize the provision of high quality elementary and secondary education are the ones that have transitioned to being modern economies. We enhance the standard quantity quality fertility-vs-education model with multiple skills and school levels and embed it in a production economy in which the non-agricultural sectors can be produced with different skill intensities. We show that the model quite naturally replicates the divergent dynamics of countries according to their observed emphasis in their provision of education. We then calibrate the model to the experience of different countries and show that counterfactuals on their education policies would have resulted in huge differences in their current level of development.

Structural Transformation and Informality.

with Luiz Brotherhood and Rafael Serrano.